My heart pounded as I approached the stage. The grand wooden pavilion, filled with two hundred of my academic colleagues, stretched before me. I’d already delivered my keynote address the day before: “Dynamical Motifs as the Link Between Neurons and Cognition,” a lecture on how to use tools from artificial intelligence to better understand the human brain.

That talk had been a piece of cake.

It was today’s talk, part of the Growing Up in Science series — meant to showcase the human behind the scientist — that had me on edge. Previous speakers had opened up about the challenges of being first-generation Americans or overcoming gender bias in academia. But nobody had a story quite like mine.

I made it to the podium and surveyed the crowd. Waitstaff bustled around the tables, pouring beverages. It had taken forever for my colleagues to make their way through the buffet line, but they were all seated now around large round tables. My sweaty hands clung to my notes as I took a deep breath and tested the microphone. “Howdy, folks,” I said as I forced a smile. “This is a first for me, but I’ll give it a shot.”

Here goes nothing.

“When I was a kid, I was told that my hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico, was the epicenter of the seventies’ heroin epidemic. I’ve no idea if that’s true, but it made perfect sense — both my parents were heroin addicts. When I found out as an adult that the television show Breaking Bad was filmed in and around Albuquerque, I just nodded and thought, Yep.

I looked up. The crowd had gone completely silent.

“For my sister, Esther, and me, having drug-addicted parents meant we grew up largely in orphanages. By the time I was a young adult, I’d been in the system for a decade. I’d lived in two group homes — and with two sets of aunts and uncles. I’d been under the long-term super- vision of” — I looked down at my notes — “thirteen sets of houseparents. I called at least sixty other children surrogate siblings: boys and girls, both younger and older, of all races, colors, and creeds.”

I looked out at the crowd again. Even the waitstaff were standing still. I took another breath. “I was a bright kid, but I was no iron robot or some hero from another planet. The profound, the beautiful, and the terrible — they all imprinted on me.”

For the next thirty minutes, I spoke about group-home life, how I’d managed to attend college, and the struggles of getting my PhD. How I’d ended up in a position to give the Princeton neuroscience keynote. Afterward, there was applause and a few questions. But there was a lot of silence, too.

On my way out, a woman from the waitstaff ran up to me. She was in her early 20s, dressed for work with an apron and hair pulled back into a ponytail. “I was really inspired by your story.”

“Thanks! That means a lot,” I said. “Honestly, I was wondering how it came off.”

“I, umm” — she swallowed hard — “grew up in foster care, too, and I always wanted to be a biologist. That was my dream — is my dream.” The words began to spill out of her. “But I had to drop out of community college to earn money. That’s why I have this job.” She glanced back at the pavilion and then again at me, waiting for me to say something.

I could relate to veering off course; my journey had been anything but a straight line. I wanted to offer words of support, but I didn’t know her at all. Where to even begin?

I realized my journey was like the concept of emergence I’d just lectured about — how complex patterns arise from simple parts, whether in artificial intelligence or in life itself.

After a moment of silence, she continued, “I just know I could do something, be someone. If I could just get on the right track. How did you do it? I mean, I heard what you said, but how’d you actually do it?”

I knew how I’d done it, as far as that kind of thing went: I’d done the work, had been in therapy. I’d studied the science. But after a lifetime of receiving bullshit advice from everyone and their mother, I knew generic sentiments were worthless. “Well…” I trailed off. Finally, a few words limped out of my mouth: “Persistence and a lot of luck.”

My stupid response haunted me the entire ride back to the airport. To tell my story properly, I would have had to weave together all the threads that had shaped my path: the group homes and friendships that had formed me, the video games that had sparked my love of computers, the mathematics that had taught me to embrace chaos, and the neuroscience that ultimately became my life’s work. It was all connected — the personal and the scientific, the emotional and the analytical.

As I thought about it, I realized my journey was like the concept of emergence I’d just lectured about — how complex patterns arise from simple parts, whether in artificial intelligence or in life itself. The same questions that drove my research now pulled at my memories: How does a child from a group home end up studying the brain’s complexity? Why do some kids survive trauma while others don’t? My science training had taught me that these questions resisted simple explanations — just like the mysteries of mental illness or consciousness that my field struggled to understand. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that my life and my work were inseparable.